Stay up-to-date on the latest news, trends and perspectives in media and philanthropy.

As you may have noticed, a few weeks ago we completely overhauled our website in an effort to better serve the rapidly changing fields of media and philanthropy. (Here’s an overview of what you can now find.) And with our shiny new website comes shiny new impact assessment resources, which we’re eager to showcase.

Washington, D.C. (Feb. 12, 2019): NewsMatch raised $7.6 million from individual donors and a coalition of major funders for nonprofit news organizations in two months at the end of 2018. During the largest-ever grassroots fundraising campaign to support local news, over 240,000 people gave to 154 newsrooms between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31. More than […]

One year ago, we announced the creation of the American Mosaic Journalism Prize. This unrestricted cash prize of $100,000 per recipient is awarded to freelance journalists for excellence in long-form, narrative, or deep reporting about underrepresented and/or misrepresented groups in the American landscape. We created the prize as part of our work that supports journalism […]

In our second collaborative webinar, Media Impact Funders and Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement Funders (PACE) convened thought leaders from across the Infogagement landscape to discuss how driving civic engagement in today’s interconnected media landscape requires re-building public trust. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter changed the landscape of democracy, granting widespread access to public discourse, and empowering citizens to […]

Today we unveil our newly redesigned website to greatly improve the online experience of our users. In recent years, we have grown in our role as a knowledge network to meet the changing needs of members and the larger funding and media communities. In response to a rapidly changing media funding field and to better […]

The Media Impact Funders team has just returned from the 2019 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, where we convened a highly engaged group of media funders to discuss innovative new collaborations among funders and filmmakers, and social impact campaigns designed to move the needle at the community level.

How do you raise thoughtful, caring, emotionally healthy children? And how do you do it in the face of struggle? If you’re a parent, no doubt these are questions you’ve asked yourself countless times. So for our latest webinar, we invited longtime friend and MIF board member Joy Thomas Moore and Pittsburgh Foundation President Maxwell […]

Last week, we hosted a webinar highlighting promising solutions to the problem of news deserts. Nearly every day, we’re reminded that local news in the United States is dwindling. Since 2004, about 20 percent of all metro and community newspapers in the United States—approximately 1,800—have gone out of business or merged. Hundreds more have drastically […]

America’s public square—the institutions, networks, and spaces where Americans engage in the critical issues facing our democracy—is facing a paradigm shift. A combination of economic impacts, advances in technology, and social change are re-shaping how we access and engage with the information that connects us to civic life.

“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” So proclaims the fictional Howard Beale in the 1976 film classic Network. And now Beale’s mantra will ring out nightly in an electrifying new stage production featuring Bryan Cranston that opens on Broadway this week. When the film first appeared, it revealed a dystopian […]

Philanthropy plays a critical role in maintaining our First Amendment freedoms by supporting institutions and independent voices that strengthen a culture of free, democratic discourse. To continue the conversation around protecting these core values, we invited participants in The Pittsburgh Foundation’s recent First Amendment conferences—The National Conference on the First Amendment: Bedrock of American Freedoms, […]